Civil rights groups, beset by aging or stagnant membership, are recasting their messages to appeal to young people. They're putting up discussion boards on youth-oriented websites and talking about jobs, education, housing, entrepreneurship and financial literacy.

Lance McCarthy wants the civil rights movement to change its course. While he says this new direction is just a tweaking of the one the movement has taken for over a century, others no doubt will see it as a sea change.

Ex-Klansman Edgar Ray Killen's conviction of manslaughter rather than murder shows some jury member consider race and "choose not to see the truth," said Rita Schwerner Bender, widow of Michael Bender, one of three civil-rights workers Killen killed in 1964.